Smile!

Jan 8, 2015 | Blog Challenges, Images, Monday Memes

Wow, it’s dusty in here. I was surprised to see how long it had been since I blogged anything, but sometime in late summer it slipped away from me. I could contemplate the reasons why, but I’ll save that for another day. I’ll just sweep the dust bunnies aside and jump back in! 😀

Of course it was easier to start posting again when I noticed Strawberry Singh has posted a brand new blog meme and will be back with new challenges.  Yay! This week she’s asked us to do our best yearbook smile.  How could I resist?
It’s always a challenge to make the default smile look somewhat normal, but after playing with my face sliders a bit I think I’m ready to start off 2015 with a cheery smile.

Hooray for new blog challenges! Thank you Berry!

 

Fashion Challenged

Aug 20, 2014 | Blog Challenges, Fashiony, Images

Once upon a time I thought it would be fun to be a fashion blogger. I love to dress up my avatars and take pics of them in cute poses, and I love to take SL pics in general, so it seemed like it would be a perfect hobby. The fashionista thing never took off for me, though, I’m far too lazy (and can’t afford) to keep up with all the new releases, and I’m not sure I have the style sense to put together terrific outfits on a regular basis. For these reasons I don’t usually attempt fashion challenges, but I saw Kitty O’Toole’s denim challenge and thought, “But I looked so cute in that outfit I saved, I have to take a pic of that…”

Much like myself, my avvies wear denim most of the time, so the real challenge was finding something that wasn’t a pair of blue jeans. I love the little denim jacket from Coquet that I’d picked up at Fameshed a few months ago. I’ve found if I wear it in large instead of my usual medium it goes nicely over some of my other mesh clothes and doesn’t look like it’s too big, which is terrific.  The dress is from ColdLogic, with an ancient (for SL fashion) tank top peeking out underneath from Celestial Studios, probably purchased in my first year or so in SL. Hey, I still like a lot of my system texture clothes, particularly for layering under mesh. A lot of it still holds up very well, I think.

I don’t know if I’ll attempt to tackle any more days of denim, I may be a bit too fashion challenged for that! But it was fun to be fashionable today. Thank you Kitty! 😀

 

Credits for most everything, (even though you can’t quite see some of it…)

Dress: coldLogic – jolie.onyx
Shirt: Celestial Studios Trixie Cami Nightfall
Jacket: Coquet Denim Jacket Blue/Burnt
Shoes: {Gothica} Maria’s Wooden Sandals
Glasses: Kumaki Glasses Style Saria 1.00
Jewelry: Maxi Gossamer Fay Malla Wooden Necklace – Group 1
Hair: Dura-Girl*51 (Dark Brown)
Eyeshadow: [mock] Dalek Copper eShadow
Lipstick: [mock] Cosmetics Sweet Coral Lipstain
Skin: *League* Erin (No brow option)
Brows, portrait pendant: mine

Running on Ultra

Aug 13, 2014 | Images, Monday Memes, Sightseeing

I went wandering today, looking for quiet and peaceful landscapes. I love the abstract, wild, impossible in real life sims, but I always seem to have the most fondness for the pretty, realistic, naturally landscaped places. I often wish I could transport myself into one of the quiet spots in SL and sit on a swing and enjoy the quiet.

With Love in Her Heart is one of those pretty places that was a joy to visit. According to the Destination Guide: “With Love in Her Heart is a simple seaside farmstead that evokes memories of days gone by. It offers a relaxing peaceful surrounding with spaces to hang out and enjoy the company of friends. Visit and experience, just know that it was created with love in her heart.“

I also noticed this week that  Strawberry Singh has a new blog meme up, asking about computer specs and performance. I was curious enough to turned my stats on while I was taking the pics above, and on average I stayed at about 15 FPS, with things about one notch below ultra. This, to me, was perfect for exploring. I’m content puttering through the world at 10 to 15 FPS, I know I can more than triple my frame rate if I turn off advanced lighting and drop my draw distance, but I’d much rather have a low frame rate and beautiful surroundings.

  1. Share any of your computer specs (video card, memory, etc..) –  2011, it’s a bit aged now:  2.00 GHz core i7, 6GB ram, Nvidia 460M.
  2. Which viewer do you use most often? – Firestorm.
  3. What is your FPS (Frames Per Second) when you have your graphics on ultra? – It depends entirely on the sim, anywhere from barely 1 FPS up to 35 or so in really empty spaces. Quite a few of the art installations or nature sims will turn SL into a 2 FPS slideshow (dense forests are particularly hard on me) so I often try to find an out of the way spot to park my pixels, then I explore via the Space Navigator. It’s still slow going, but never seems to crash me like extensive camming with the mouse can.
  4. How often does Second Life crash for you? Is it usually just a viewer crash or your whole system crashes? What are you usually doing at the moment of the crash? I’ve only had viewer crashes. About half the time when I take a snapshot I will crash when I try to save to disk, but only on the first try, and usually if I’ve been camming a lot before the shot. If I can successfully save the first shot then subsequent ones never seem to be a problem, so I sometimes take a throwaway pic after I log in.
  5. Do you know of any tips or tricks in the settings that would improve performance? I think when I insist on running with graphics cranked up there’s not going to be much I can do to improve my performance short of getting a brand new machine, so I am tipless.

Berry says she’ll not be doing regular weekly memes any more, but I’m hoping she might give us a challenge at least once a month, I’ve really missed doing these. 😀

 

visit With Love in Her Heart

Out for a stroll

Jun 21, 2014 | Images, Monday Memes

This past Monday at Strawberry Singh’s blog, Edie Sedgwick brought us a new meme for the week:

Your challenge this week is to imagine your own avatar demise. Choose a sim, a pose, and wardrobe. Snap a photo of your avatar corpse and blog it! And of course, add your link in the comments below so we can all grieve over the loss of someone so beautiful.

I would never kill off any of my avatars in the sense of deleting them, but I was very tempted to retire Ravensong after my husband died because bringing her in world without him felt too lonely. I did put her into semi retirement for a while, and let her take some time off while I used a different account for a few months until it felt right to bring her back. Now I don’t think I would ever retire her for good, but if did for some reason it just seems logical she’d return as a zombie.

  1. What would you eat for your last meal?  I think I would have something from Chipotle. Zombie Raven says any avatar that doesn’t run fast enough is fair game.
  2. Where do dead avatars go? Well, today Zombie Raven thought a stroll on the pier would be fun. And she had to stop and take a selfie, of course.
  3. Have you ever been to a cemetery in SL?  No, and right now I’m not sure I could bring myself to. I’m still taking baby steps to deal with my own loss, seeing the emotional losses of others would be hard to bear.
  4. What would you like them to do at your avatar wake?  I don’t think any of my avs would require a wake, they’d just quietly transition to their next stage of existence.
  5. What would you like it to say on your avatar tombstone? “Watch out, I’m right behind you.” }:D
  6. Which is worse, when a good friend moves away, or losing touch with a good friend who lives right near you? When they move away. Usually if you are losing touch with people nearby it’s because you’ve begun to grow apart and don’t have a lot in common anymore.
  7. If you knew that everyone you know was going to die tomorrow, who would you visit today? Zombie Raven will just hang out and wait for her friends to turn.
  8. If life is so short, why do we do so many things we don’t like and like so many things we don’t do? Sometimes we have to do things we don’t enjoy a lot because we need a paycheck, and we don’t do as many things as we’d like because we can’t afford it.
  9. If you could offer a newborn child only one piece of advice, what would it be? Hang in there, kid. And watch out for zombies.
  10. What color is your underwear? Underwear?

 

Love

Jun 15, 2014 | Chatter, Images, Monday Memes

I’m still lost in memories.

Eight years ago tonight we were making the last preparations for our wedding. We were getting things ready, picking up my maid of honor from the bus station, and looking forward to the big day. I was a nervous wreck, but he was calm. He was always calm. Tuesday will be, or would have been, our eighth anniversary. Thinking about that has been extremely hard, and this is going to be one of the toughest days I’ll face, but I’ll try to make the day special, and maybe try to get out and do something we enjoyed. And maybe I’ll go in world for a bit, and tour some of the places we liked to visit together.

Now and then I entertain the idea of logging his avatar in and just sitting with him. I’ve logged his av in a few times to do some account maintenance and if I have need of his inventory, and a couple times I’ve logged Raven in to stand beside him, or cuddle on the couch for a few minutes. It’s one thing to do that with one of the alts, but when it is his own main avatar it’s a strange feeling. Strange and lonely and sad. It’s quite surreal to watch his av standing there, moving around on screen, while knowing that he will never be the person behind that avatar again. I still haven’t completely grasped that he won’t be a part of my real life again either. I still think I’ll hear him come in the door, and everything will be normal again. Full acceptance is a long and hard journey so far, I’ve still barely gone more than a few steps.

Amidst all my musing about love and memories, I noticed that the weekly blog challenge that went up this past Monday over at Strawberry Singh’s blog, is about love. It comes courtesy of Edie Sedgwick, who is keeping the lights on while Ms. Berry is vacationing. Edie asks us to grab an avatar we love, a friend, a partner, a colleague, and take a selfie. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I’m not terribly social in SL, I never have the courage to friend people and I rarely get friend requests, so any of the “grab a friend” memes have been a bit challenging.

(As an aside, I thought I had actually added a new person the other day, after a brief pleasant chat… I would swear to you that I clicked ‘accept’ on the friend request… but when I logged in there were no new names on my friends list. I don’t know if the other party thought better of it after I logged out and unfriended me, or if I just somehow manged to mess it up, and I’m too embarrassed to send an IM asking if it was my mistake. Oh well.)

There were actually a couple of people I could think of that I might have grabbed and photographed, but as always my thoughts go straight to my husband. You’d think that since I have another blog created just to work through this widow thing that posting there would be enough. Nope, I still must talk to anyone who will listen. He will always be the first person I think of when I hear the word “love” in any context. He was and will always be the love of my life, so I thought I’d answer the questions and gaze at his pictures.

  1. How did you and the person in the photo with you meet? • Via match.com. Sometimes the online dating things work. Or, at least they did several years ago when we tried them. I’d never have the courage to do it again.
  2. How long have you known each other? • Next week would have marked our 8th anniversary, and about 9 years together.
  3. What do you love about this person? • His creative spirit. His calm. His confidence. A million other things.
  4. What place in SL do you love? • I always seem to fall hardest for the scenic, natural landscape sims.
  5. What clothes or shoes in SL do you love? • L&B jeans, they just have such nice butts! Looking through my inventory, I probably have more clothes from Sn@tch than any other individual designer, especially when it comes to texture clothes. I also used to love Artilleri a lot. For mesh clothes I like Cold Logic, and I’m trying to branch out a bit and learn some new designers.
  6. What does love mean to you? A shared joy in each other’s company. Or a particular attachment to something, like nutella. No really, I love the stuff. 😀
  7. What is your biggest regret? The past seven and a half months have been filled with “What if?” moments. What if I’d done this differently? What if we’d been more in tune with our health? What if? What if? What if?  It’s hard to shoo the what if’s away.
  8. Which is the one event that has had the biggest impact on you and your life? Meeting my husband.
  9. What do you love and hate the most about the human race? We have such capacity for compassion and joy and friendship. Sadly, it seems many also have a great capacity to be cruel.
  10. What color is your underwear? • Blue ^_^

Thanks to Edie for the meme! 🙂